It just didn’t make any sense. She was the healthiest one in their group. She never drank. She was always active. She rode mountain bikes and rock climbed.
Then, all of the sudden, she just couldn’t keep up. Last February, as Michelle Maykin was riding her bicycle across the Bay Bridge, she felt uncharacteristically fatigued and short of breath. Soon after, on a snowboarding trip with her friends, she found herself lagging on runs she used to easily shred.
It was time to see the doctor. Perhaps she just had the flu, or caught a strange bug. But when the doctor returned with Maykin’s blood test results, the diagnosis was unbelievable: Maykin, a 26-year-old UC Berkeley graduate and tax adviser, had leukemia.
For over a year, Maykin has been battling for survival, undergoing five rounds of excruciating chemotherapy and cancer treatments. Tomorrow, students at De Anza will have the opportunity to lend their support to Michelle, by showing up to the Main Quad between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. to have their cheeks swabbed for donor matching.
“Project Michelle,” spearheaded locally by Matt Sun, one of Maykin’s closest friends, is a nationwide effort to find a bone marrow donor for Maykin before June 21. According to her doctors, if Maykin doesn’t find a donor prior to that date she will have to undergo a sixth, more intensive round of chemotherapy, which could be devastating to her long-term health.
“It’s been very difficult finding a match,” said Sun. “Only 3 percent of Asian Americans are registered on the National Bone Marrow Registry.”
Ethnicity plays a large role in marrow compatibility. Complicating matters even further, Maykin is half Chinese and half Vietnamese, narrowing the likely donor pool substantially. Regardless, cross-ethnic matches, where white donors are found for black patients, or Latino donors for Asian patients, occur frequently.
Tuesday’s Project Michelle drive, co-sponsored by De Anza’s Asian Pacific American Students for Leadership and Vietnamese Student Association, will be the first at De Anza, but similar drives are ongoing in several cities across the country.
“We’ve had drives in New York, Seattle, Dallas; Mega drives in Asian shopping centers in Houston. We’ve registered about 4,000 people so far,” said Mabel Yoshimoto, Michelle’s best friend since sixth grade.
“We knew that with her type of leukemia there was only a 50 percent chance that chemotherapy would beat it alone,” said Yoshimoto. “But when she relapsed it was a big disappointment. Still, we’re very optimistic; there has been a tremendous outpouring of support.”
Maykin is currently residing with her parents, receiving treatment at a clinic in the East Bay. Her family and friends try to make sure that there are always people around to keep her company, playing board games and watching movies on days when she’s not too fatigued. Recently, they even got together for karaoke.
Project Michelle is hoping that, due to the large population of Asian students at De Anza, a donor will be found Tuesday to save Maykin’s life.
Said Yoshimoto, “We are incredibly grateful and really touched. None of this would be possible without all the friends and many strangers getting themselves involved.”
More information can be found at http://www.projectmichelle.com. Bone marrow donor registration can also be completed at http://www.marrow.org.
